The embodiments disclosed herein relate generally to compression or tension testing of flocculated sediments, an aggregate mixture of clay minerals and biopolymers, referred to herein alternatively as “floc” or “sediment”. To test a floc, it should remain saturated and submerged in the formation solution. The floc must be easily isolated from other flocs for single floc geotechnical compression tests that can be made relatively rapidly on a large number of samples. A device to test a floc should have minimal and quantifiable frictional resistance to motion, minimal and quantifiable cantilever effect, and minimal, known, or quantifiable compressional resistance of the manipulator tips. Fine-grained sediment transport, deposition and consolidation of soft sediments is determined, in part, by a complex relationship between sediment makeup and geotechnical properties of clay-aggregates. Compression tests on soft sediment grains that are comprised of clay and polymers can help to better understand how contact interactions could alter the aggregate properties and influence sediment processes of transport, deposition and consolidation in estuarine and nearshore littoral environments. Compression tests can provide data that can be incorporated into numerical models, which can be used to predict sediment transport processes. In order to determine the compressive strength of clay aggregates, a highly sensitive load cell and mechanism to hold the small specimens (˜0.5 to 2 mm in diameter) in a controlled vertical plane are needed. Such a device would require a fluid receptacle within which the specimen is submerged and resting on a sample plate. The sample plate could be manipulated upward, via a stepper motor-driven lift that could push the specimen at a controlled and specified rate into the “punch” that could be connected to a load cell. The load cell could transfer the information to a computer that could quantify the force required to deform the specimen. Such a device could be used in nano/micro mechanical testing of individual flocs, or other small particles, in sizes that range from approximately 10 to approximately 5000 microns. The device could facilitate compression tests of flocs that are comprised of clay and polymers mixed in fresh or salt water for which the pH, or other chemistry, varies. The device could also facilitate imaging the deformation process in real-time, and could use that capability to correlate the floc compressive deformation process by generating a graphical representation of a force-displacement (i.e., compression) curve. The compression data could then be readily used to address the influence of contact interactions between flocs and deformation of those flocs in discrete element models of sediment transport.
What is needed is an environmental cell for nano/micro mechanical and biomechanical testing to facilitate compression or tension tests of soft sediment aggregates that include clay and polymers mixed in fresh and salt water and which are retained in a liquid of the same salinity, alternatively for testing biological materials such as, for example, blood cells, virus, and bacteria, and also gels, foams, rubbers, surface coatings, and food. Currently, compression tests are not conducted on small aggregates that are comprised of soft, low-strength, materials. Also, there are no technologies available that can quantify the Young's modulus of these grains. Currently, these measurements are not made on soft, low-strength, materials.